Abstract
The earlier version of Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, entitled Trimalchio hints that there is something emblematic in the perennial mistrust and fascination with new money.1 A former slave now rich, famous for his distasteful extravagance at a long, eventful banquet, Petronius’s Trimalchio convincingly exemplifies ostentation, excess, and ridicule.2 That almost two thousand years lie between Petronius’s prototype and Fitzgerald’s legendary character is in itself telling: it bears witness to the modernity of the figure. Yet, what does it mean to say that what is true for Petronius’s upstart is still true for Jay Gatsby? While we are all familiar with status anxiety and know that each society produces its own values, criteria of distinction, and outsiders, we do not necessarily understand the mechanism at work in these phenomena. In Western societies, where class distinctions have been supposedly abolished, the constant creation of new distinctions and the innovative ways of separating the wheat from the chaff is all the more unsettling. In his 1960s’ fresco, Georges Perec transforms the modern-day Trimalchios into avid young characters defined by their unquenchable desire to possess and their “mimetic excess.”3 Awkward pioneers of consumer society, they are eternally “condemned to conquer: they could get rich; they could not do away with their humble past.”4
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Trimalchio, ed. James L. W. West III (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Petronius, “Cena Trimalchionis,” in Petronius: Satyricon; Seneca: Apocolocyntosis, ed., E. H. Warmington, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1969).
Georges Perec, Les Choses. Une Histoire des années soixante (Paris: Julliard, 1965), p. 27. (My translation).
Franco Moretti, The Way of the World. The Bildungsroman in European Culture (London: Verso, 1987), p. 15.
Chantai Thomas, “Ce Pays-là.” Préface in Madame de Genlis, De l’Esprit des étiquettes de l’ancienne cour et des usages du monde de ce temps (Paris: Mercure de France, 1996), p. 13. Thomas has, in fact, written a fictional account of the old world of Versailles and its minute ceremonial in her 2002 novel, Les Adieux à la reine (Paris: Seuil, 2002).
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le noir (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1952), p. 467
See Balzac, Le Bal de Sceaux (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1976). See chapter II, pp. 55–66.
Copyright information
© 2012 Sarah Juliette Sasson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sasson, S.J. (2012). Introduction. In: Longing to Belong. Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330819_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330819_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44755-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33081-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)